This was news this morning.
Moved from the Catholic thread as that was less serious.
https://apnews.com/article/vatican-lgbtq-pope-bfa5b71fa79055626e362936e739d1d8
This was news this morning.
Moved from the Catholic thread as that was less serious.
https://apnews.com/article/vatican-lgbtq-pope-bfa5b71fa79055626e362936e739d1d8
I will say, there’s a lot of unjustified “I told you so” from rad-trads who obviously didn’t read what Francis actually said about it.
That’s the trap they ultimately fall into over and over again. We believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church and protects her from teaching error, which includes guiding the selection of the next Pope. So to dismiss the Pope as a heretic or whatever is to imply that the Holy Spirit makes mistakes.
Of all the things that fundies say about us, this one is to me the most ignorant and insulting.
You also won’t be disappointed by searching for “SSPX” on Twix.
Interesting, I’d never heard of this group.
Amusingly, one of the top-front things on their website is “We take the protection of children seriously”, whereas their wiki lists a number of cases where they allegedly intentionally covered up child sexual abuse by their members and allowed them to continue practicing until outed by journalists, at which time they were ejected.
I think the emphasis on scripture over and above tradition becomes ignoring tradition altogether, which also means ignoring history. The vision of the Christian becomes exceedingly narrow.
I read an article once referring to both Tolkien (a devout roman catholic) and cs lewis as “so called Christians” because they didn’t follow whatever narrow reading the writer had regarding truths in the bible. (It was an article about the lord of the rings.)
Yup, they’re as fake as they accuse the heretical
Vatican II
Church of Paul VI
of being. (I really miss that blah blah emoji.)
Stumbled into this criticism of SSPX’s god-pope (lower-casing on purpose because no).
In general, it’s not good to go to “regular” media to understand anything religious from anything. They tend to be ignorant.
I subscribe to The Pillar, which is run by two canon lawyers, so their explainers tend to be pretty good.
Here’s their explainer:
And then from one of the canon lawyers:
That said, I’m more interested in the financial corruption trial that just ended, and the appeals about to start.
More on that here:
I saw a headline about that yesterday. I didn’t even know that the Vatican had a prison.
You need to watch more Warrior Nun. The Vatican has a serious prison in that show.
Okay, it’s unlikely that Becciu will spend any time in prison
He’s still enjoying his luxury apartment, and he’s probably still doing it on the Vatican dime…
The subject of prison for those convicted in the Vatican City is addressed in this article:
This is a subject that I have occasionally wondered about but never researched. Thanks for the info!
re: the financial trial – the APs, etc., generally have been cribbing from The Pillar guys.
more today:
The particular person I’m interested in, because it was pretty stupid for the Vatican to go after him, was Mincione.
I think they went after him because somebody made a bad investment decision, and didn’t like that embarrassment. So they thought, “Well, as long as we’re going after a bunch of people for embezzlement, etc., let’s throw this guy in! Let’s say… uh… he should’ve known that these funds were being improperly invested!”
“While the Vatican tribunal acknowledged that Mincione was not guilty of fraud against the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and has not corrupted any Vatican Officials, it found him in violation of the provisions on the administration of ecclesiastical goods (in particular of canon 1284 of the Vatican canonical code) on the basis that the Athena Fund had allegedly agreed to take under management USD 200 million from the banks Credit Suisse and BSI, which – as Mincione was only made aware of today – could apparently not be earmarked for this purpose according to such cannon 1284.”
Mincione was essentially found guilty of investing money which, under Vatican law, was not supposed to be available for investing, and he was supposed to know that.
The money in question, borrowed from the two Swiss banks and disguised on secretariat legers using prohibited accounting measures, was the source of the initial bloody conflict between Becciu’s old department and the Vatican’s then-financial chiefs, Cardinal George Pell and Libero Milone back before their ousting in 2017.
There seems little question, and has since 2019, that these investments broke Vatican City laws. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that Mincione would have been able to know that, or even that the burden was on him to be sure the most senior officials in the Vatican’s own state department were in compliance with their own laws.
Mincone has also long argued that if he was supposed to know where the Vatican’s money was coming from, and verify it was available for investment purposes, the same burden should fall on the bank which brokered the whole project, Credit Suisse.
But, as Mincione has pointed out, the bank was not cited in the case, either as a defendant or for witness testimony. Mincione argues that this is because the Vatican prosecutors shied away from taking a global investment back to court, but were much more comfortable prosecuting him with a view to recouping money the Secretariat of State lost in the deal.
So, the stupid thing is that, of course, Mincione isn’t going to go to jail anywhere. They’re just trying for an asset grab to make up for losses.
But Mincione operates out of London, and he has his own lawyers. And the UK doesn’t much care for the Pope.
Before charges were even filed against him in Vatican City, Mincione sued the Secretariat of State in the UK, asking for judgment that he had dealt plainly and fairly with them. So far, he’s had the running in the preliminary stages of that case, after winning an appeal against a decision to delay proceedings until after the Vatican process had played out.
He’s also filed suit on the specific issue for which he was convicted on Saturday — whose responsibility it was to ensure the Vatican state department was investing its cash legally, according to their own laws.
The UK cases are key for Mincione, and for the Vatican.
On Saturday, Mincione was given a sentence of five years. While Mincione is unlikely to present himself in Vatican City to go to prison, millions of euros of his assets, many of them frozen in Switzerland, are liable for the court to seize in damages.
But even if Swiss authorities honor the Vatican judgment, and the signs so far are that they will at the end of the appeals process, it doesn’t mean he has no avenue of redress.
The High Court of England and Wales is well used to handling complex financial cases, more so than the Vatican City tribunal, and may come to a different conclusion in the case. If they do, the English court could well award Mincione damages against the Vatican.
Way to go, guys!
Wow, what a mess!
But if the English court does end up awarding Mincione damages against the Vatican, what power would there be to enforce that judgement?
It sounds like maybe the Swiss are willing to pay to the Vatican Mincione’s frozen assets if appeals go for the Vatican what what are the chances that the Vatican would honor the English courts judgement and pay any judgement to Mincione?
I just like how his name is “Mincione” - one letter away (ch instead of c) from being the Italian word for “fucker”
Lots of different groups have assets in the UK.
Anyway, it could at least keep the Vatican from investing in commercial real estate in London in the near future, which might be a win-win.
It’s not so much that anybody can force the Vatican to do anything, especially in a civil suit. But there can be repercussions in a financial center when you gain a reputation of not playing fairly with counterparties.